This invention relates to a feeding apparatus and, more particularly, to an apparatus for feeding articles one at a time to a power tool such as a screwdriver for automatically driving screws in mass production and assembly line operations.
Articles having a head and a shank such as bolts and screws are extremely difficult to rapidly feed generally axially one at a time from a succession of the articles in generally parallel side-by-side relationship. Because they have so many edges, such articles are highly susceptible to becoming caught or hung up in the feeding apparatus.
While many devices have been previously devised for rapidly and repetitively feeding such articles one at a time, few of such devices have been successful in mass production and assembly operations. However, one device which has been satisfactory and highly commercially successful is disclosed in MacDonald U.S. Pat. No. 3,247,874 issued on Apr. 26, 1966. This patent discloses a complex apparatus for feeding screws one at a time to a power screwdriver. The screws are forced by compressed air through a flexible hose and into an adapter mounted on the nose of the screwdriver. The adapter releasably holds and positions one screw at a time for being driven by the screwdriver into a workpiece.
The apparatus for feeding the screws through the flexible hose is complex and has numerous parts including six parts which move in a complicated cycle of several discrete steps to remove one screw at a time from a guide track and feed it through the hose. Thus, manufacture of this feed apparatus is relatively expensive and it requires frequent service and replacement of several moving parts to maintain the apparatus in good working order for high speed mass production and assembly operations. Moreover, adapting the apparatus to feed a different size screw requires changing at least four parts and often as many as seven parts.